On Wednesday, 2 June 2021, at 11am EDT, Stephen Johnson talked with Annie Gibson about her first experiences with Performance--her 'First Gatherings.' That conversation is included below, in full. You can find out more about her life and career here.
Annie grew up in Toronto, in a family of doctors, and with a playwright in the house, and is now in charge of the leading publisher of plays in Canada. Her first memory of a theatrical experience was a production of Peter Pan at (most likely) the Shaw Festival, though all she remembers is the small light that was Tinker-Bell, and how it grew when the audience clapped. More complete--and indelible--was the memory of being taken to see both Cats and Phantom of the Opera, when she was, as she said, likely too young to understand either. But she does remember that in both cases, she sat in the front row of the theatre, and in both cases, was sufficiently prepared to know what was happening on stage--and what was going to happen. Her mother (she checked) remembers that during Phantom, she kept looking around at the chandelier from her seat, waiting through the entire evening for it to fall. These are the kinds of experiences that were memorable to her at that age, though in all likelihood she attended other theatre. Annie also remembers the influential experience of a summer program at the Young People's Theatre, 'Behind the Scenes' Camp, and participating in the technical theatre program--a total of two young people signed up, everyone else choosing the acting program--and having the opportunity to make, among other wonders, a set design maquette.
Our conversation moved on to some later memories, not the earliest but perhaps the most important. Annie remembers attending a production of Anita Majumdar's Fish Eyes, when she was in her early 20s, and being struck by the intimacy of the space (Theatre Passe Muraille's back space), by the intimacy of the audience (in her memory, there was no one else present), by the way in which the performance combined drama and dance, and finally, how it allowed her to identify strongly with the protagonist while at the same time understanding how different the subject matter was from her own life. Just so, her experience of attending a production of Dennis Foon's New Canadian Kid, as a young adult surrounded by small children, a lesson to her in what theatre for young people can do. There was a sense, in reminiscing about these later experiences, that Annie at that time in her life was discovering the theatre she did not see when she was young--though she emphasized that those early experiences of large-scale musicals were life-changing, much-loved, and in fact also intimate in their way, because she was so close to the stage, and sufficiently prepared to understand and appreciate the practice of making theatre. Even now, she says, sitting at the back of a large theatre just isn't for her--theatre needs to be up close and personal.
At the end of our talk, Annie made a point of talking about the last performance she saw before the pandemic shut down all theatres, The Negroes are Congregating, by Natasha Adiyana Morris--because of the sadness of its loss, and her belief that it effectively dealt with so many issues that have been front and centre since, issues that have not had the benefit of this theatrical voice.
See below for a full interview transcript.
GATHERINGS: ARCHIVAL AND ORAL HISTORIES OF PERFORMANCE
First Gatherings Project; Interview with Annie Gibson by Stephen Johnson
[00:00:06.110] - Stephen Johnson
Thank you very much for agreeing to do this, Annie. I really appreciate it. And I want to ask you if you've read the consent materials and to know that you do consent.
[00:00:22.230] - Annie Gibson
Yes, I do consent.
[00:00:22.230] - Stephen Johnson
Thank you so much. And now I would like to begin by asking you for just a little precis of your background - where you were born, raised if we're going to talk about early experiences and performance, just where you come from.
[00:00:41.370] - Annie Gibson
So I was born in Hamilton but didn't stay there. My parents, they were both doctors and had done medical residencies at McMaster Hamilton. I don't know, I wasn't born. After they finished school they worked for the Salvation Army for ten years and traveled around the world doing medical work and got pregnant with me while they were in Kenya and thought maybe they'd have me there, but then realized they were the only doctors in like a 100 miles radius and were nervous about bearing their own child. So they returned home to Canada to the only hospital they knew and felt comfortable at. I was born in Hamilton, and quite quickly afterwards we moved to Port Hope, Ontario, and then quite quickly after that moved to Baltimore, Ontario. So I spent my very young, formative years in sort of small town Ontario, and then moved to Toronto when I was nine or ten and have been here ever since. I went to a local high school, which I adore. It's called Harbord Collegiate, and everyone thinks I say Harvard and are very impressed that I went to Harvard for high school, but then I have to correct them. And then I went to U of T for my University.
I was a student at Victoria College and studied - History was my major. And I minored in English and Classics. So I don't have a drama background other than classical Roman and Greek theatre However, my mom, when I was about, I don't know, seven or eight, decided that she didn't really want to be a doctor anymore and that her true passion was playwrighting. And that's one of the reasons we moved to Toronto - is it's hard to break into Canadian theater when you live in a small town, Ontario. And she was like, 'We could be closer to the theaters and to the action and to the culture'. And so we came to Toronto partly for her career. And I think it was a good move. I think it has served all of us very well.
[00:02:40.400] - Stephen Johnson
And just for the record, your mother's name is?
[00:02:43.320] - Annie Gibson
Oh, yeah, it's Florence Gibson MacDonald. Yeah. She writes delightful plays, although these days she sort of moved away from playwrighting and now wants to write novels. So she's working on that. It's everyone's sort of dream - to move off and do something else. I think she just will keep reinventing herself as time goes on. Yeah.
[00:03:02.760] - Stephen Johnson
So that's the way to be. That's great.
[00:03:06.030] - Annie Gibson
And then for this job, I graduated University and came here and I didn't quite know what to expect at Playwrights Canada Press. I was hired as, like, a customer service employee. It's a staff of two. And the previous customer service person was leaving. And I sort of was in the right place at the right time, handed in my resume. And my predecessor, Angela Rebeiro, was like, 'Great, come on in'. So I did that for a few years, always with the understanding that she was retiring. She sort of said that to me in the opening interview was like, I will be retiring. You will have a new boss within a year. And so our board of directors really struggled to find someone to fill the position as publisher. And they ended up offering it to this man named Christian Horn, who was actually German but had had quite a bit of experience with Canadian theater and Canadian playwrights. And I think for a year to 18 months, they sort of waited for him to be able to get his immigration stuff correct. And the Canadian government just sort of never wrote back to him. Like, his immigration just stalled, so he was never able to come to Canada to accept the job. And by that point, I'd been here for several years, and Angela had the brilliant idea of, 'Well, what about Annie? Annie knows what she's doing'. So that's how I became the publisher.
[00:04:30.150] - Stephen Johnson
And as it turned out, you did know what you were doing.
[00:04:33.440] - Annie Gibson
Right? I think I figured it out pretty well.
[00:04:36.410] - Stephen Johnson
I think you did.
[00:04:38.430] - Annie Gibson
Yeah. I think it helped to have, like, a mom who was in the theater. Of course, there were certain things I knew there were books of plays always around the house. My mother is published by Playwrights Canada Press. However, I'm not allowed to select her work. I have to turn that over to a committee.
[00:04:55.360] - Stephen Johnson
Right. Well, then let's get down to the question at hand. And I know that there are a series of questions and things to think about that you received in advance that everyone in this part of the project receives in advance. And I'm sure you know them well and you thought about it. So maybe I can just ask you to speak to an early - we don't have to stick to one memory. So far, no one has.
[00:05:25.300] - Annie Gibson
I wrote down a litany of them.
[00:05:27.730] - Stephen Johnson
Excellent. Litanies are excellent.
[00:05:29.680] - Annie Gibson
Right. I feel like I have a few really strong formative memories when it comes to me in theater. Right. So my first memory is - and this is the funny part. It's like, you know how your memory of the child works is you remember certain things, but you don't remember everything. So it is my understanding that my parents took us to Shaw to see Peter Pan, but all I remember is there was a little spotlight that was Tinkerbell and the audience would applaud and the spotlight would grow. And so I love that memory. It was very like, 'Oh, my God, there's an actual fairy on stage'. I was not aware that it was a spotlight. I thought it was magic and fairy dust. And like I said, I must have been, I don't know, six, seven, something like that. Because it was before we had moved to Toronto and started seeing things a bit more regularly. And it was just fantastic. And then I would say within a year or two, my mother took me to see Cats and we sat in the front row. She was like, my young child will enjoy this fun romp of magic and music.
And, oh, my God, did I ever like, I fell in love with that musical. And I mean, I've seen it since as an adult. It's a bit cheesy now, but I still love every minute of it. It's again, like it's the spectacle, which is very different than what I see and enjoy in my work. But it just sort of just spoke to me of the magic of theater. And it being different than like a movie. Like, they can do anything in a movie. They can make you believe that what you're looking at on screen is reality. And it's so much more difficult to do that on stage. And your actors and performers have to be finely tuned machines, right, to do some of the moves that they're doing in things like Cast. And I think it brought within me a strong love of theater. And then there was The Phantom of the Opera. That was also my mother was like, 'Well, if Annie liked Cats-'. I think after we moved to Toronto, she took me to see Phantom. And again, we got to sit in the front row and the flames that came up from the stage.
So she told me, my mom that in the show, the chandelier comes from behind the audience and crashes down onto the stage. And I don't remember this, but she tells me I spent the entire first act looking behind me at the chandelier, waiting for it to fall. So, yeah. And it was interesting because I was taken to a lot of big productions when I was a kid. Like, my uncles would take me to Cirque du Soleil every summer because they were down at Ontario Place. And it wasn't until much later that I got to see sort of more dialogue-driven Canadian theater, which is the thing I love now. I'm devastated that I don't get to see it every week like I was. It's not the same online, but so thinking about all this got me thinking. So there were two shows that were sort of formative to my career at Playwrights Canada Press that I saw early on. There was I guess it would have been a remount of Dennis Foon's New Canadian Kid at Young People's Theatre That probably would have been done in the early 2000s because I'm pretty sure I went and saw it before I started this job. And it's theater for young audiences. So I'm sitting in an audience full of children, and I think that was really nice for me. I hadn't seen children's theater since I was a child, and it was just watching that be magical for other people.
[00:09:19.990] - Stephen Johnson
So how old would you have been? Approximately?
[00:09:22.340] - Annie Gibson
Yeah, in the early 2000s, in my very early 20s and maybe like 22s.
[00:09:27.000] - Stephen Johnson
And you just said you did see some children's theater when you were a child.
[00:09:32.070] - Annie Gibson
Yeah.
[00:09:32.870] - Stephen Johnson
Do you remember that?
[00:09:34.600] - Annie Gibson
Not really. I remember being like-. There are pictures of us at the Polka Dot Door live.
[00:09:41.050] - Stephen Johnson
All right. That's very impressive!
[00:09:44.380] - Annie Gibson
I don't remember any of it. And it was funny because we also performed a bit. I never really wanted to be on stage, but my mother enrolled this in, like, tap and ballet classes. And I remember hating those mainly because I had to get up early on a Saturday morning, and I was like all of seven years old, but I'm not a performer. It's not something I've ever found interesting.
[00:10:10.230] - Stephen Johnson
So in school also, you didn't do any kind of stuff.
[00:10:15.350] - Annie Gibson
No. So, the year after we moved to Toronto, there was, like a scholarship program at our school that would give a kid, like, $500 to attend a day camp of their choosing-. Because I'm forgetting one of my absolute favorite shows of all time, which was, YPT did A Midsummer Night's Dream. And it was one of the most gorgeous things I have ever seen in my entire life because it was sparkly. Oh, it was sparkly. It was like the set and costume design. And if I'm not mistaken, I'm pretty sure Yana McIntosh played Titania and like, oh, it was good. And it was Shakespeare written for kids or that is accessible to kids, so they're playing up extra hard the comedic aspects and what's the character's name with the donkey head?
[00:11:06.590] - Stephen Johnson
Bottom.
[00:11:06.590] - Annie Gibson
Yes. Thank you. It's been too many years, but so I think I would have seen that and then sort of fallen in love with it. So for this scholarship thing that I ended up winning, I did a YPT Behind the Scenes Camp. And, like, the acting camps at YPT were all the rage, right? Like, they had 20 kids in every class or whatever. And in the Behind the Scenes class, there were two. There was me and this other kid, and it was in the shop. The person who was leading the camp, her first name was Andrea, and I will not remember her last name, but she taught us literally how to use heavy machinery, like bandsaws and stuff like that. And she taught us about designing sort of costume stuff and set. So we got to make little maquettes. And I can't remember why I built this, but it was like a rainbow arch.
[00:12:00.170] - Annie Gibson
There are pictures of me with this thing where it was big pieces of wood. And then at the top were these ribbons that were attached to sticks and you could pull them through. Anyway. I don't know. I have no idea what it was for, but I loved it. And one day she got us to build fake bricks. And it's one of my favorite stories of all time, bringing it home and showing my dad and saying, hey, Dad, look what we did in class today and throwing it at him. And he was like [jumped back], because he thought it was a real brick. But it was really interesting for me because that was the part I found a lot more interesting and exciting than what was happening on stage. That's great. As an audience member, I love to watch it, but it was never something I would want to do professionally or even like for fun, like standing up in front of people.
[00:12:53.700] - Stephen Johnson
But you're certainly not alone there. I mean, there is a large contingent of people who love being backstage and in the wings and underneath the stage and above the stage and everywhere else but the stage.
[00:13:07.130] - Annie Gibson
Yeah.
[00:13:07.630] - Stephen Johnson
But they love the theater. I mean, it's a significant part of the theater. That's very interesting that you say that. And that there was a separate area of the YPT. For Techies.
[00:13:23.480] - Annie Gibson
Yeah.
[00:13:23.980] - Stephen Johnson
Good.
[00:13:24.660] - Annie Gibson
Right. I think Maja Ardal would have been the AD at that point. I have this vague recollection of her name, and then, of course, later grew to know her professionally. But, yeah, I ended up doing that course two years in a row. And the second year there were a few more kids in it. And it was really interesting, too, because I was very independent. Like, I would have been 10 and 11 and my parents would let me ride the subway by myself. We lived at St. Clair and Bathurst, and I got to ride down to Union Station. And I remember being given, like, pocket money so I could go buy lunch at the Rabba Fine Foods.
[00:14:02.750] - Stephen Johnson
Right.
[00:14:04.670] - Annie Gibson
Yeah. It was just really interesting because it wasn't just, 'Okay, you're going to go to day-camp and then come home in the evening'. It was this whole, like, I remember buying my parents, like, anniversary gifts for the first time ever at the store because I'd passed the store on my way to Union Station and back, and I was like, 'Oh, this is nice. They'll enjoy these glasses'. Anyways. And then the other show I wanted to talk about was Anita Majumdar's Fish Eyes, because it would have been the first show that I saw once I got this job in 2005. So I would have been 24, I guess. Yeah. And it was my first time in the Passe Muraille Backspace. And it was part of a development festival. So it wasn't like a full piece yet. And it was called, I think, the Buzz Festival. And what they've done is like different performers or writers or actors would come out and perform a small piece or part of a larger show. Angela, my predecessor, she'd gone to see Joseph Pierre, I think, who we were publishing. And I was like, 'Oh, this Anita Majumdar's piece looks interesting. I'll go see it'.
[00:15:18.180] - Annie Gibson
And it was this miserable rainy day and was like, slushy because it was February. Actually, in that case, it must have been in 2006. Well, anyway, my timeline gets a little funny.
[00:15:31.430] - Stephen Johnson
It's just so for us all.
[00:15:34.190] - Annie Gibson
Because I started this job in June of 2005. So it was winter. It would have been anyways-. She performed. But I remember so vividly there was no one else in the theater. There were like, maybe two or three other patrons because it's a development festival. It's the middle of winter. I'm sure it was like a Tuesday night, which now is my favorite night of the week to go see plays. I love going to see plays when other people aren't there, partially because I don't really like sitting beside people, which when I went in to see this show. So you've been in the Passe Muraille Backspace, right? When it's a full house, they cram in against those benches. And then if anyone moves on the bench, everybody rocks back and forth. But I had yet to experience this because there was just such a small crowd on the night I went. I got an entire bench to myself, and I was able to sort of spread out my wet coat.
[00:16:28.950] - Annie Gibson
I felt so cozy watching these performers. And it was interesting thinking about this right now because Fish Eyes is a bit of a spectacle, right. Like, there's a lot of dance included in it, which you don't really see in sort of your straight up, dialogue-driven play. And so there was Anita dancing away, and I was enthralled. I was like, 'Oh, my God'. And I don't know how many years later it must have been almost ten years later, we finally published the play. Like, she'd written, like, multiple other sort of followup plays that we were able to put all together. And I find it very formative in my career. Sort of like, this is the kind of stuff that I want to put on the page.
[00:17:12.970] - Stephen Johnson
And why was it the kind of stuff? It was the kind of stuff because it included dance as well as narrative as well as because it had a lot in it.
[00:17:22.990] - Annie Gibson
Yes. And I think it was a story about a young woman who, like, as a young woman, I hadn't seen very many stories like that on stage, right. And for me, too, as a white person, the show is about a young Indian girl in BC who is like, she's what's the word? Professional dancer as part of a student group outside of school. And it colors her experiences, right. Like, she's in training with a teacher who is offering her certain cultural-. I can't think of the word. It's sort of like, yeah, I feel like the teacher is saying, these are the standards by which our culture lives. And yet this girl is being raised in sort of semi-suburban BC, going, 'Well, this is the culture I'm a part of, in my high school there'. I just thought it was this really elegant way of looking at somebody trying to figure out their place in the world. And certainly I hadn't seen anything like that about like a young Indian woman, right. A lot of the stuff is written for young white women. So certainly that was reflected a lot of the time. But I love learning about other people and the experiences they go through.
[00:18:43.720] - Annie Gibson
And now I get to do that constantly through plays. Yeah, that is kind of what I'm saying. It's like now as a publisher, I'm often choosing things where I'm like, this showcases someone else's experience. It doesn't have to all be my experience, right. I'd be so bored just reading about the things I know about all the time.
[00:19:04.490] - Stephen Johnson
Yes, of course, if I'm going back to your early experience in the theater, it was always that way. It's not like you started off seeing shows about your own experience. I mean, you were seeing Cats.
[00:19:18.910] - Annie Gibson
Yes.
[00:19:19.280] - Stephen Johnson
And you were seeing Phantom, which couldn't have been farther away from your own life experience. Not exactly slice of life naturalism you were growing up on.
[00:19:28.800] - Annie Gibson
But I could always imagine myself as Christine in The Phantom. Right here's, this love story where this young woman is swept up in the moment. She's this young ingenue. So I feel like I think I related more to that early on, right. And it felt more like a possible experience. I say possible and kind of air quotes there because there's no person with a giant scarring on his face hanging out under my office building. But I think there's a thing to that, right. Where it was like this young white woman who I could see myself as.
[00:20:07.070] - Stephen Johnson
Right.
[00:20:07.900] - Annie Gibson
Yeah. Where, I think it's a bit different, whereas if they'd cast a young black woman, maybe I wouldn't have identified with her as much, right. I still would have enjoyed the story, but I wouldn't have seen myself there to the same extent, although many other people would have, right. So anyway, I'm all for a multitude of experiences being displayed.
[00:20:29.040] - Stephen Johnson
If I could just pick up on a couple of things that you've mentioned, you mentioned because certain things resonate with someone like me. The fact that you enjoyed attending Fish Eyes in a theater where there was just basically you.
[00:20:45.650] - Annie Gibson
Yeah, I remember there were a few other people, but like, they were behind me. I couldn't even see them. I felt like it was a performance for one.
[00:20:53.750] - Stephen Johnson
And that you enjoyed that. And there's this sense that you liked being in a place where you were not the only audience member, but that you could be alone with that theatrical experience. So different from your early experience when you're in a large theater jammed with people. That must have been a pretty radical departure for you to be in a space alone or nearly alone. And also, you know, not being jammed in with people. It's a very different experience, like a private audience. That's just something that I latch on to because of everything you've been telling me. Also, I have to ask-. You're quite right, when we're very young, our experiences, our memories are so selective.
[00:21:44.790] - Annie Gibson
Yeah.
[00:21:45.330] - Stephen Johnson
So incredibly selective. I mean, how many people, young people remember the plot of the thing they go to see, really? But I do want to ask if you remember the audience around you. For example, you attended Phantom of the Opera, and you knew enough context before going in to keep looking around.
[00:22:07.490] - Annie Gibson
Yes.
[00:22:08.420] - Stephen Johnson
So you were always kind of a backstage person. You're always, like, technically oriented. You were saying, 'Okay, when's that coming down? How's that going to work', even when you're young. Now, I realize I'm terribly reading into your memory, but I think it signifies that you are turning around and looking at this thing and waiting and anticipating. I wonder if there was a sense in your early memory of what was happening backstage of what was happening around you. The artificiality of it.
[00:22:47.670] - Annie Gibson
Yeah. And I think part of that is my mother trying to give me the context. I think Phantom is not meant for very young children, right. And there's going to be pyrotechnics, there's going to be maybe some scary bits. So I think she sort of went out of her way a bit to try and prepare me for the parts that might be startling or scary, but in doing so just made me super interested about how does this all work. Because there's this other part in Phantom where in the-. So, ok, I've since seen it like four times because, well, I really love this show. But there's this part where the stage has become like the catacombs under the opera house, and the Phantom is like piloting a boat through the sewers, I guess. And how does this work? Yeah, I can't really remember the exact staging of it, but there's one point where basically, like, a hole opens up in the floor and the Phantom jumps through it in this fog and mist.
[00:23:45.890] - Annie Gibson
And I can't remember if Christine or if it's the guys who are chasing them, they're not sure how to go down because they're like, we can't jump into this hole. We can't see. And I mean, that's the plot. But I think even as a kid, I was like, 'Oh, I'm sorry, how did this magic happen? How did he get down there?' And instead of my mother just being like, 'Oh, well, that's the magic of the stage'. She would say, 'Well, there's a panel on the floor that lifts up'. And you don't get to see it from your vantage point in the audience, especially as someone who would have been 4ft high at the time. I think there was an element of explaining away the unknown. But to me, it's sort of like figuring out a magic trick because I just want to know the science behind it.
[00:24:33.410] - Stephen Johnson
Sure. And that's something that you're educated in if your mother is explaining that to you prior to going or setting you up for it, but also perhaps during-. That feeds into an interest. Well, it feeds into your interest in backstage work and technical work. Because you're interested in how the magic happens, not just that it happens, but how it happens, which is very interesting. Not everybody watches the theater that way. A lot of people don't want to know how the magic happens.
[00:25:08.150] - Annie Gibson
Yeah. Well, I spend my time often picking apart a costume or something. Like if I see something with a really spectacular costume, I'll be like, 'Oh, wow. How did they do it?' Oh, God. There was a show at YPT that we subsequently published, called The Forbidden Phoenix, and there was this Queen figure who they put like a two-story dress under her. And I still am like I mean, obviously she was on some sort of, like, wheelie device with some fabric over her, but I remember being-. I was distracted by it as an audience member because I'm like, 'Ooh, what's happening here?'
[00:25:46.850] - Stephen Johnson
I also want to ask you about the place, the specific place, because you were quite clear in those two or three early memories about where you were sitting and you were in the front row. I mean, the front row, you're a couple of feet tall and you're in the front row. I recall being in the front row for shows when I've been an adult and not really being quite sure what's happening over the lip of the stage. Do you have a sense that you were like, do you have an image in your mind of being sort of peering over the stage and seeing everybody? And you'd be very close to them.
[00:26:27.420] - Annie Gibson
Yes.
[00:26:28.320] - Stephen Johnson
Even in a large space and a big spectacle, you'd be very close.
[00:26:32.200] - Annie Gibson
Yeah. And it's interesting because now I don't like sitting at the front at all. I will always move to the back of the stage, or the back of the auditorium. That has to do with the size of theater. I see mainly now, right. Yeah. The biggest space I'm in is probably the main space at Buddies, where the back audience there, the back row of the theater is still quite close. But yeah, it's funny because I remember not so much trying to peer over the stage. I think there was enough happening that I was good. I could see. It's also possible I had a booster seat. I don't remember that for a fact. But I know places like what's going to call the Pantages, whatever the one on Yonge Street is now they have that kind of stuff. So I think there's a strong possibility I had one of those to help with the height problem.
[00:27:21.710] - Stephen Johnson
And do you have a memory - and you haven't indicated that you have a memory of this, but I'm going to ask it anyway - of preparing to go to these large shows, of arriving, of being there, of dressing. Because it would have been-. Because that's what you would have done.
[00:27:45.680] - Annie Gibson
Yeah, I think we must have. Like, if my mom was taking me to a show, however, there was this definite shift, especially after we moved to Toronto and she got more into this theater community where she didn't feel as compelled to dress up. I go in whatever work clothes I'm going to my sort of independent theater. But even now, like, I saw Phantom a few years ago when it came back and I was like, 'I'm going out for, like, a big night of theater, I'm going to dress up'. But I don't really remember that the same from my early memories.
[00:28:25.690] - Stephen Johnson
Well, you wouldn't have been the responsible party and making certain [crosstalk 00:28:30]. Yeah. May I ask, because there's this shift, great shift in the performances that you attended. You started off your earliest memories are attending these very large and spectacular performances. And at a certain point in your life, as you've indicated, you started attending much smaller ones, like Fish Eyes.
[00:28:57.850] - Annie Gibson
Yeah.
[00:28:59.670] - Stephen Johnson
Was that a sudden change in the timeline of your life? Was there an evolution or did theater sort of stop for a while and then suddenly you're going to the theater and you're going to the Backstage at TPM.
[00:29:21.330] - Annie Gibson
I think a lot of it had to do with what my parents took me, too, right. Like, when I was a kid growing up, they love to spend, like, a weekend in Stratford every year or what have you. So they would take us to these things in Stratford, like when I was a kid or sorry, when I was a teenager, our school did an annual trip to Stratford every year in the fall. I think the first year when it was like Romeo and Juliet. So the entire 10th grade took off to Stratford. But then it just became like, whoever wants to go and they were usually going to see a Shakespeare show. But it was something my parents were willing to pay for because it wasn't cheap between the ticket and bus transportation or whatever. So there was that. And then when I was in university, I didn't see anything. I don't remember doing that. And it was funny. I remember this breath of fresh air when I finished university because I could go back to reading books for pleasure. I didn't have to read school books anymore. I remember picking up a novel that had like I mean, I'm sure it was great, but it wasn't like a classic work of English literature that I was studying or like the 400-page tome on whatever historical concept I was looking at.
[00:30:36.360] - Annie Gibson
I just remember going like, 'Oh', and it was so lovely. By that time, I was a little more independent. I wasn't living with my parents, so they're not being like, let's go entertain the kids this weekend. So they weren't offering to take me to things. And it didn't cross my mind to go on my own, right. Other than my mom, I had no entry into the theater community. She was quite connected at Factory, so she would have flyers and stuff around the house when I'd come home to visit. But I think it always just seemed like, 'Oh, well, that's her work'. And it wasn't something that I was super-. I wasn't going to go do it on my own. But now that I'm thinking about it, I'm positive she's the one who took me to see New Canadian Kid. It would have been sort of end of my university. And I think she will have seen it and gone like, 'This is like the greatest show, this is so fun. Everybody's got to see it'. And took me to go see it and like, oh, I adored it. It sits in my mind very fully.
[00:31:45.030] - Annie Gibson
Although it's funny, I hadn't thought about it in years and was thinking about it a couple of years ago. And I was like, 'Oh, I think now I know one of the actors who was in that show'. So I mentioned it to him and he was like, 'Oh, no, that wasn't me'. And I was like, 'Oh, damn'. Of course, my ten-year-old memory is the memory from ten years ago. Again, not what it was, but yeah, I think it's just I don't know, especially when you move out on your own and there's things that seem to maybe be your parents' interest that you enjoyed, too. But I don't know. I wanted to just hang out with my friends, I guess, and watch TV or whatever. Yeah. But it didn't surprise me when this job came up and it was theater oriented. I was like, 'Oh, yeah, this is a world I'm comfortable in. This is a world I feel I know not relatively well at the time, but I don't feel there are any barriers, certainly for me to getting more into theater'. It helps now that the Press pays for my tickets, too. Not The Phantom of the Opera, of course, but to the independent theatre.
[00:32:53.970] - Stephen Johnson
I also want to go-. I mean, you mentioned your uncles took you to Cirque du Soleil, apparently always large spectacles, but let's say alternative forms of performance, not always stand alone, scripted plays, musicals, absolutely. But there's still narrative works, but there are other-. And although, of course, there's an argument that Cirque du Soleil is narrative as well. And I know some of them are and some of them aren't. But the idea of alternative forms of performance, whether they're spectacle or not, including, for that matter, television. Is there a context surrounding your attendance at these large musicals and then later on smaller shows that in any way informs your own cultural interest or your cultural understanding of what performance is?
[00:33:54.500] - Annie Gibson
Well, as you were talking, I was just thinking about all these parallels. So when I was in early high school, one of my main interests was going to see bands in concert. And often that started with the big bands that I knew. And by the time I was in later high school, I was much more into independent music. So was going to very small clubs to go see very small bands. It's just interesting because often yeah, the entry point is the big thing, that everybody knows, that gets all the attention. But I remember those big concerts feeling overwhelming, like you had to stand the whole time. And as a continually short person, you can't see over the seven-foot guys in front of you. It was a lot easier to go to, at the Rivoli, where we on several occasions convinced the bands to arrange the audience by height. But that's the beauty of getting to know the performer, right. Who is sort of like, 'Oh, yeah, why can't we arrange the audience by height? Let the five-foot girls come in front'.
[00:35:13.830] - Stephen Johnson
That's very interesting. That's very interesting to me that this is another kind of performance that you attended where you actually had some input, you actually had some input into how the performance took place, how the audience was arranged, and you got to know people very different from your theatrical experience, from the standalone theatrical experience.
[00:35:41.490] - Annie Gibson
Yeah.
[00:35:42.770] - Stephen Johnson
I'm glad I asked that question, Annie. Not that I'm going to pursue it any further, but that's a very interesting sidelight to it, like a context to it, because you went to see bands. And I'm sure many of the other people I'll talk with spent their time seeing musical performances, dance performances, other kinds of performances. And it's interesting to me that people do separate these things out.
[00:36:14.880] - Annie Gibson
Yeah. And it's funny because I think of music performance less as performance, I guess, and more of music. But it's not, right. Musicians get up on stage and perform and like some musicians are, say, playing an instrument. So they have almost like a technical role. Whereas other musicians, like-. I went and saw Taylor Swift a few years ago, and she sang mostly I think she might have played guitar on a few songs, but I mean, that was one of the most spectacular concerts I've ever been to. They put her on like a crane and then lifted her over the stage so everybody could see her. And it was brilliant. It was beautiful. I was like, 'Wow'.
[00:37:03.270] - Stephen Johnson
I mean, does Phantom compare really with Taylor Swift. Which is more spectacular?
[00:37:09.100] - Annie Gibson
Phantom. Because that's one of those things, right. Every time I've seen it, I've had relatively good seats to see it. And so I've been up close to see a lot of those technical things. And so a year or two ago, just before things shut down with Covid, I got a Mirvish subscription because I really wanted to see Hamilton. But there's a difference between a one off ticket and entire subscription. So I bought the cheapest subscription and had balcony seats for most things. And I found myself very removed from the performances I saw. Like, the only one I connected with was Hamilton. And I think that's because I knew the whole thing inside and out. Everything else I saw, I was sort of like, 'What am I watching?' And I think part of that now is I am so used to being a lot closer to the stage. Like, everything I see at Factory and whatnot - even in the back row, I'm still only like 30ft from the stage.
[00:38:09.810] - Stephen Johnson
And how interesting that that's the way you started going to the theater, too, those first few formative experiences, no matter how large the show was, how spectacular, how large the theater was, your memory is being a few feet away from all these people because you were in the front row.
[00:38:27.290] - Annie Gibson
Yeah.
[00:38:28.000] - Stephen Johnson
And that's very fortunate for you. But it also forms a, I think, it forms an attitude toward the theater. Of course, you remember the show differently if you're at the back than if you're at the front.
[00:38:42.640] - Annie Gibson
Yeah. I remember seeing Chicago, maybe, in the back row with my mom, and she brought opera glasses. I'd seen the movie, I knew lots of the songs, and I still felt so removed from it, even like a big show like that, right.
[00:39:05.210] - Stephen Johnson
Yeah. I really appreciate this conversation. Unless there's something else that you suddenly remember that you have to talk about-.
[00:39:14.080] - Annie Gibson
Well, I think a lot now about the last show I saw before things shut down. Especially in March when we were coming up on the one year anniversary. I was thinking a lot about the last time I did everything. The last restaurant I went to, the last time I saw my dad, and the last show I saw was The Negroes Are Congregating by Natasha Adiyana Morris. And it was this really excellent show, and I'm not clear if it got good turnout or not. I would say the performance I was at, there were a good number of people there, but I don't think it was sold out. And six months later, the stuff that was being talked about in that play was front and center for a lot of people, right. Like, it was just talking about the Black experience in Canada. But if I'd known that was the last show I was going to see, I would have stayed much longer. I miss now being in an audience of people. Somebody sent me an archive video to watch instead of reading their script, and it was filmed in the before times there are people in the audience and listening to the other members of the audience laugh-. It was great. I started crying because I was like, 'Oh, other people and this communal experience'. So I'm just very much looking forward to getting back to that and not Theater on Zoom, where I feel like now I am the only audience member, at least in my home, and I hate it. I hate it so much. I don't want to be near other people, but I want them to be in the same space as me. I have very defined rules for this, apparently.
[00:41:01.910] - Stephen Johnson
Well, that's an excellent place to end. I'm going to thank you very much for doing this.